Office of the Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs

Message Archive

This email is being sent to all members of the Baruch College faculty.

For an archive of announcements sent from the Associate Provost beginning June 2011, click here.

Dear Colleagues,

E-permit is the system that allows our undergraduates (mostly) to take courses elsewhere within CUNY, and students at other CUNY colleges to take courses here. Changes in CUNY’s e-Permit policies, in effect since December 2013, should be understood by members of our faculty, especially by departmental and other advisors. A memo from the central office linked below lists the 2013 changes. Some that seem particularly relevant are found within the penultimate bullet in the memo. Here is the relevant bullet, followed by some elaboration, some additional information, and the link:

If Course X at College A and Course Y at College B are equivalent in TIPPS [2016 note: the TIPPS system has effectively been replace by CUNYfirst], when a student at College A submits an e-permit to take Course Y at College B instead of Course X at College A, the Registrar's office at College A will check the submission to ensure that there are no negative implications for the student's financial aid. If there are, the student will be notified there is a problem. If there are not, the submission will proceed to College B (with notification to the applicant). College B must approve the e-permit application unless the student does not have the required prerequisite(s), or unless the college has received prior approval from the Central Office of Academic Affairs to exclude e-permit students from the course for which the student has submitted the e-permit. No department-level approvals will be involved at either college.

Several implications of this bullet have not been widely understood. It spells out a policy whereby a Baruch student who wants to take a course on another campus seeks permission from our Registrar’s office. If the course has been approved as equivalent (and if the other qualifiers spelled out above are met), the student will be approved for e-Permit.

In the past, Baruch had a blanket policy of not allowing students to take courses on e-Permit at the community colleges. These changes mean that our policy no longer is in effect. The significant issue is individual “course equivalencies.” As before, such equivalencies are determined by our faculty: new courses are routinely sent by our admissions office to departments for review; sometimes courses judged equivalent many years ago (or judged not equivalent) need to be revisited—in any case, this review process remains a faculty responsibility. But according to the new policies, such equivalences for specific courses are the only academic grounds for approving or denying permission to use the e-Permit system for a particular course (i.e., no blanket policies).

A new CUNY website might influence the future use of e-Permit: it allows matriculated students to search for all courses in CUNY by subject, title, days/times of class meetings, place within the curriculum (e.g., a particular Pathways category or courses for majors in specific discipline), mode of delivery (face-to-face, hybrid, online) etc.

Currently, about ¼ of 1% of credits in CUNY are attained via e-Permit. The central office anticipates that the revised policies and the new website will increase that percentage.